With the help of (again) my friends from the Epson-inkjet mailing list, I now have a set of prints made with the Cone Color Piezo inkset. Apparently Conetech has reformulated the yellow ink. I believe that these prints were made with the original version, so my judgements on image quality and print life may no longer be valid. That said, here are my initial impressions. So far, after 10 days, none of the samples show even a hint of orange shift.
Note, too, that I didn't make these prints, and have no knowledge of what profiles might have been used, nor what media type settings were chosen.
Conetech Matte: Looked at by itself, results are quite nice. Reds seem to be more red, and less orange, than I'm used to from the 1270, and purples are more purple. (I know, some of you think I'm on a purple kick.) Blacks seem black, not gray, and the color balance is very neutral. On most papers, with my 1270, the photodisc image seems either warm, with a yellowish background, or too cool, but on this print it looks white. Plain white, just as it should be! Overall, however, the colors seem just slightly dull and muted.
Comparing it to a print from the 1270 on Red River Premium Matte (which I was testing at the same time), the differences are more noticeable. Most obvious, the RR print is decidedly warmer. (Maybe it's time to by some profiling software!) The reds are actually not much different than the RR print, but the purples are decidedly more purple. And colors are most definitly less bright and saturated than the RR/1270 combo. Which shouldn't be a surprise.
Epson Archival Matte: Noticeably warmer than the Conetech Matte. Colors are definitely less vibrant than on the Conetech paper, too. It doesn't look bad in isolation, but the Conetech paper is definitely better. With the Epson paper, the reds are more orange, and the purples are weaker.
Somerset EV:: This looks more like the Archival Matte than the Conetech. Actually, it's even warmer than the Epson paper. And the colors are quite muted, like the AM. And purples are even weaker than the Archival Matte.
Conetech Glossy: O.K. The "common wisdom" is that pigment inks and
glossy papers don't mix. So how well do Conetech's ink and paper work together? Well, a lot better
than my previous test of pigments with glossy papers
But how does it LOOK you ask? Well, not too bad, actually. It's noticeably warmer than the Conetech matte, about the same as the Epson AM. Colors are slightly more saturated than the Conetech Matte, but only slightly. And colors are more accurate, I think, on the matte paper. More problematic, is that the print shows pretty severe bronzing. When the light reflects off the print towards the eye, this results in major posterization effects.
Compared to the 2000P on Premium Glossy (or RR Ultra Pro Gloss), it looks even worse. The 2000P prints are much more saturated and have more neutral color balance (although they are a bit warm, too). Bronzing and posterization effects are minimal.
My advice? If you really want glossy and pigment inks, the 2000P is the way to go. If you think metamerism is too big a problem with that combination, then you're better off sticking to matte papers. Of the 4 papers I'm testing in this round, the Conetech Matte is clearly the best. Perhaps custom profiles would help the other papers, but I still don't think they'd match the Conetech for saturation.